The invention pertains to the attribution to and effectiveness of single known data points and their effect on other single, but unknown data points, in a massive secondary, tertiary or higher linked system. One example of this is the attribution to and effectiveness of public relations or other marketing events on revenue. It is commonly accepted that public reputation and consumer awareness are key drivers of corporate revenue and brand value. However, the effects of particular public relation or marketing events on the reputation or public awareness of a firm or product is difficult to attribute quantitatively.
Traditionally, public relations and marketing professionals analyze paper or electronic sources to determine what effect, if any, their efforts to drive company reputation and consumer awareness through the media can have any measurable effect. And any subsequent measured effects deduced have been limited to a narrow set of metrics such as share-of-voice, number of impressions, etc. No further conclusions have been made to quantitatively link these already limited set of metrics and its effect on sales or revenue—the ultimate measure of corporate health.
Whereas earlier ages were hampered by the lack of paper sources, current analysts may be overwhelmed by the amount of data that are electronically available through search engines or third-party aggregated press databases. This information overload has made it harder, rather than easier to determine the cause and effect of public relations and marketing efforts and the effect of reputation and consumer awareness campaigns have in driving corporate revenue. Further, current methods of measuring PR and marketing performance have been limited to efficiencies on a per-impression acquisition or per-campaign basis. For example, cost per impression or cost per click through various media channels. A company with a far larger market share (or indeed PR and advertising budget) will naturally have wider media exposure than a smaller competitor, yet this in itself does not quantitatively indicate how effectively the available resources to impart consumer awareness in the media are being utilized as contributor to corporate revenue. There is a need, fulfilled by this invention, to resolve this massive data dump into coherent, graphical results.